CHICAGO — For drycleaning operators navigating today’s communication landscape, selecting the right method to deliver a message can be just as important as the message itself. Matching the communication tool to the situation — whether it’s a difficult conversation or a routine announcement — can mean the difference between building trust and creating confusion.

In Part 1 of this series, we examined the challenges leaders have in communicating to today’s employees and the benefits of building structure into your communication efforts.

Today, we’ll continue by exploring how to select the correct ways to communicate various messages and how to measure how well those messages are getting through.

When it comes to selecting communication tools, Sean Abbas, president of Threads Inc., understands the importance of matching the method to the message’s importance and sensitivity.

“If it’s something that you find hard or painful to communicate, it should be done in person,” he says. “Everything in your body is going to tell you that it’s something that you probably want to do indirectly — have a manager or HR communicate it.

“My philosophy is that if it’s something that’s really difficult, you should step up and be a leader. If it’s something that you are going to be uncomfortable communicating face-to-face, it’s something that needs to be communicated face-to-face.” 

Abbas says the inverse is also true: “If it’s something like, ‘I just want to let everybody know what the upcoming holiday schedule is,’ those things can be communicated through impersonal means and methods.”

Jan Barlow, who owns Jan’s Professional Dry Cleaners in Clio, Mich., has found similar success with face-to-face communication as her primary method, because digital communication often fails to convey the full message.

“If you text them, sometimes you can’t hear inflection,” she says. “You misread it. Your intention does not get communicated in a text.”

Today’s workplace faces challenges from digital distractions that previous generations never had to deal with. Barlow has observed this in her own company and has taken steps to address it.

“When I first started my business, you didn’t have to deal with the internet,” she says. “You had a phone and maybe you had a fax machine. You advertised in the newspaper or on the radio or TV. Now you have Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the online reels and TikTok and so on.

“Back then, you had three TV stations. Now you’ve got 4,000. There are so many choices that can fill up your brain. People are just confused all the time.”

This information overload affects employees’ ability to focus and build relationships, Barlow says.

“They spend so much time looking at their phones and not getting the personal relationships,” she says. “People really need to be with people. And so that’s why it’s so important to have face-to-face meetings with no phones.”

Communication challenges that extend beyond digital distractions to include language barriers require thoughtful approaches.

With these barriers, Abbas believes in making genuine efforts over perfect execution.

“People who speak a foreign language appreciate your effort in trying to speak the language and trying to communicate. When I say ‘effort,’ I mean any effort that you make in communicating to them in their language. It can be something as simple as using Google Translate to help translate English into their language.”

Perfection isn’t the goal.

“My experience is that people from another country really appreciate you giving the effort to try,” he says. “Just try. Just give it some effort. It’s showing humility, and that you’re willing to make that effort.”

Maintaining consistent communication across different work schedules and employment levels also requires intentional effort and, sometimes, creative solutions.

Barlow’s approach is straightforward: “We really try to accommodate when the most people can be there, and then if you can’t be there for a meeting, we’ll do a one-on-one.”

She’s also structured her business to minimize communication gaps: “I try not to have any part-time people.”

When part-time employees are involved, Abbas stresses treating each employee as an individual regardless of their schedule.

“You just can’t treat them any differently,” he says. “If you look at employees as human beings, rather than part-time and full-time employees, then communicate information … that’s highly personal — do it in a human way.”

Determining whether communication efforts are working requires looking beyond immediate responses to longer-term behavioral changes and the workplace atmosphere.

“Watch the behavior, not the words,” Barlow says. “You can’t listen just to what they say. You’ve got to pay attention to what they’re doing.”

If something needs to be addressed, she uses a clear timeline: “You give them a measurement tool, and then say, ‘OK, we’re going to talk about it in a week.’ And then you talk about it in a week.”

The most reliable indicator, Abbas says, is overall workplace satisfaction.

“Generally speaking, they’ll enjoy coming to work more,” he says. “If work is uncomfortable, if things aren’t getting done, if you have high turnover, then everything is screaming that you need to be more involved.”

Part of this is recognizing the importance of personal connection.

“I love coming to work because we’ve got a good workplace,” Abbas says. “I know my employees. I know my employees’ spouses’ names. I know their kids’ names and, in some cases, what they do for a living or what school they go to. I have an interest to know things at that level.”

Come back Tuesday for the conclusion of this series, where we’ll examine paths forward when communication isn’t working, as well as creating positive communication moments. For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.